The Customer Journey Maestro

If you can't beat them, join them. I have resigned from my own career as a freelance writer because AI is replacing people like me, and there's no point in waiting around for the inevitable. Now I'm focused on learning how business people can leverage AI. I don't yet have a service to offer around this, but I'm happy to discuss the practical applications of AI anytime.

B2B Strategy Advisor and Consultant

I specialize in building and executing content marketing strategies for companies seeking sustained revenue growth. My process is to create a customized messaging framework (aka, “brand story”), develop a content strategy and calendar, and execute the content strategy by building a content team and/or writing brand content.

Fractional Content Director

I love to write and create content of all kinds. My broad and deep experience across sales, marketing, and customer success gives me a unique perspective and the ability to write compelling content for just about any industry. My approach is to get the inside truth from the people behind each story, and I don’t believe in taking shortcuts. I write and publish for your customers, to engage them, educate them, and compel them to take action. The SEO stuff comes along for the ride. Let’s talk about your freelance writing/content needs.

Freelance Writer

I help B2B companies build and execute modern marketing strategies focused on customers.

B2B Marketing Advisor

Hire me on a full-time or part-time basis to up-level your go-to-market strategy. And it won’t cost you an arm and a leg.

Go-to-Market Strategy Advisor

Your customers have their own Journey that may not match your Funnel or Flywheel. If you want to understand their journey and be there when they need you, that takes work. Designing a customer experience that builds trust, now that's another level entirely. I'm here to help - on your journey.

Customer Journey Guide

On-demand expertise in marketing strategy, demand generation, content marketing, social media marketing, product and customer marketing, sales and marketing alignment, and customer success.

Fractional CMO/VP Marketing

CMO for Hire

Are you in transition? Starting from scratch or making a pivot to a new revenue growth strategy? My Virtual CMO services provide proven expertise to help you jumpstart sales, marketing, and customer experience prior to hiring executives and staffing departments. It's a low-cost, low-risk way to get the strategic advice you need.

Virtual CMO

Riptide Business Press

Ed Marsh and I have written a book, titled Common Sense Revenue Growth, that helps CEOs understand the digital and consumer disruption facing them today and develop plans to grow in spite of those challenges. Buy the book at www.commonsenserevenuegrowth.com.

Author, Podcaster and Consultant

Kuno Creative

Co-owned one of the first and most successful inbound marketing agencies, Kuno Creative. Grew the agency from a handful of talented marketers and designers to a 50+ person agency with clients ranging from national healthcare and technology companies to international consortiums and manufacturing giants. Specialized in marketing technology and sales enablement - helping companies fix leaky funnels and sales pipelines via strategy, marketing automation and optimized CRM utilization. Please visit Kuno's website, www.kunocreative.com for more information, or follow me on LinkedIn.

EVP and Co-Owner

Awakening Technology Company

Developed corporate websites from scratch using HTML/CSS, then created a proprietary CMS for creating client sites backed by a SQL database using ASP.net and later, Ruby on Rails.

Web Developer

Zydeco Energy

Independent oil and gas exploration company in Houston, TX. No longer in business.

Executive Vice President and CTO

INEXS

Exploration Geophysicist

Raytheon - GeoQuest

Product Marketing Specialist

Shell

Research professional working in electron microscopy for Shell Research and in geophysical interpretation research for Shell Exploration and Production.

Research Geoscientist

B2B Marketing Strategy Advisor With Company, Agency, and Freelance Chops

I retired in 2017 from a 40-year career, mostly in sales and marketing, for a variety of energy, manufacturing, and software companies. My penultimate position was co-owner of Kuno Creative, a digital marketing agency and one of HubSpot's first agency partners. My contributions continue as I seek to help other agency owners, professionals, and free-wheelers navigate their way through gnarly challenges in business and life.

John McTigue

Full-funnel ABM for B2B brands with 5+ figure deals | Co-Founder @ FullFunnel.io

You need more pipeline that turns into revenue. But:
- Most marketing leads never convert to deals
- ⁠Outbound is in continuous decline 
- All the investments in trendy programs, agencies or tech didn’t move the needle. 

It’s time to try implementing full-funnel sales and marketing programs. 

Why? 

So you can:
- Accelerate this quarter’s revenue while building the future pipeline
- ⁠Convert 5-15% accounts to pipeline
- ⁠Bring marketing and sales teams together to drive the KPI that matters the most: sales velocity. 

We helped dozens of B2B tech companies implement full-funnel marketing and sales programs with 10%+ account-to-pipeline ratio. 

We will take your team by the hand and together, implement a scoped pilot program with clear milestones to prove the key KPIs, before investing in operationalization and scaling. 

To learn more or ask me anything, connect with me here or visit our website at fullfunnel.io



Vladimir Blagojević

Here's why so many good CMOs get fired. 

Leadership wants:
- faster results
- bigger numbers
- cheaper acquisition 

...all of that at once. 

This short-term ROI pressure pushes CMOs to do what gets measured: 

When forced to choose under pressure, CMOs are 5X likely to pick demand over brand. 
(recent study by Jon Miller, Ray Rike /Benchmarkit, Bill Macaitis and Carilu Dietrich). 

But this creates a structural problem.

- We put all our effort into meeting this quarter's number
- We don't invest in long term programs that build awareness and trust 

A few quarters later, the pipeline dries up. 

The numbers back this up: we're spending $2.00 to acquire $1.00 of net-new ARR. And the CAC payback time has been constantly increasing by 12.5% at median since 2022 (Pavilion).

Why is this happening? 

Leadership still believes that marketing is like a gumball machine: you put in $ and get $$ out (credit: Jon Miller). 

We know that reality is different: 
- Non-linear, complex buying journeys
- Early influence matters: more than 80% of buyers short list products they discovered before the buying process

But our attribution hides the early influence, and the "credit" goes to the last touch was before the deal, which reinforces the gumball machine thinking. 

So, without clear attribution to early and middle-funnel activities, leadership doubles down on short-term ROI.

And when the pressure doesn't bring results, CMOs get fired. 

The cycle repeats. 

--- 

As long as we stay in this loop, things won't change. 

But ripping out the entire infrastructure and starting from scratch is not an option either. No leadership will support it. 

The solution is an evolution, not a revolution. 

It all starts with a small-scoped pilot: 
- No new hires, a small cross-functional team 
- No extra budget, scoped down to a small set of accounts we have 'the right to win'
- Attribution: the team gets the credits for the pipeline created 
- The main goal is not volume, but effectiveness. By working together, from awareness to pipeline, that we can turn a higher % of high-value accounts into deals

Full-Funnel ABM and Demand Gen For B2B Companies w/ High ACV | Co-Founder @ FullFunnel.io

Here's the pattern every CMO recognizes.

You're pressured to pour everything into hitting this quarter's number. You squeeze every last drop from the existing pipeline and demand. 

By meeting this quarter's number, you've depleted next quarter's pipeline. You didn't get to invest in the activities that build awareness and trust six to nine months out.

And leadership happily raises the bar. 

We're trapped in a system that punishes long-term thinking but demands long-term results.

"I'll survive this quarter, show ROI, and next quarter will be better."

No, it won't. That's rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The cost of non-strategic decisions compounds: 

1. ATTRIBUTION

65% of CMOs struggle proving marketing's revenue and pipeline contribution. This is the reality of last touch-attribution. 

Deals take months, sometimes years. Buyers might read your content, attend an event, see you on LinkedIn, talk to a partner, and only then reach out to sales.

But in the CRM, all that early influence disappears. The "credit" goes to the last touch before the deal.

Instead, consider a blend of self-attribution, account-based attribution, and customer interviews. Look for qualitative signals, not just quantitative ones.

2. PROGRAMS

Jon Miller's research: "when faced with budget cuts, marketing leaders are 5X more likely to protect demand gen budget than brand.

Odd, given 73% of companies agree that brand investment is a long-term investment that makes demand generation more efficient."

Instead, we need programs that balance long-term brand awareness, future pipeline development, and this quarter's goals

3. TEAMS

In most B2B orgs, there's a lack of cross-functional collaboration with sales.

Even with best intentions to work together, misaligned incentives get in the way. 

But without an orchestrated effort across GTM teams, it becomes impossible to influence the complete buyer journey. 

4. TECH/AI

Leadership hears "AI" and imagines instant pipeline at lower cost.

Yes, we can create more content than ever. Pull public data points and "personalize" at scale.

But all we're doing is scaling tactics that didn't work in the first place.  

Instead, AI should scale processes we have proven and refined through many iterations:
- Pilot → document & refine → train AI 
- Show AI what 'good looks like' with examples of high-quality output (quality benchmarks)
- Use deep insights and research about the target ICP segment as input for AI

---

The way out? 

1. Strong fundamentals (brand narrative, differentiation, positioning, ICP, buyer journey...)⠀
2. Full-funnel programs: awareness → demand capture → pipeline → Buyer enablement→ CS & expansion
3. Balanced time horizons 

- Long-term programs create brand and increase sales velocity
- Medium-term programs create future pipeline
- Short-term programs help to accelerate pipeline and capture the demand

Understand customers. Shape the journey. Build brands buyers choose.

B2B marketing plans often fail because of one reason:
Lack of clarity.

Bad plans include vague activities that are usually misunderstood by leadership and sales.

Brand awareness is not about running ads for ungated content.

ABM is not about making a wish list of accounts, running display ads, and automated emails.

Lead nurturing is not about setting up an automated sequence of emails to push the discovery call.

Yet most plans just mention these programs without any clarification.

If sales and leadership don't support these plans, it's not because they don't get marketing.

It's because they:

- Don't see the impact of these programs on the bottom line
- Don't expect it to be a cross-functional motion and expect marketing to run everything without sales involvement

Good marketing plans are:

1. BALANCED

- 80%: always-on programs that work historically
- 10%: short-term cross-functional campaigns co-created with sales
- 10%: experiments

2. DETAILED AND FOCUSED

All programs have clear:

- Detailed timeline
- Goals and expectations
- Success and failure criteria
- Resources involvement
- Leading and lagging indicators to track program efficiency
- Forecast
- Weekly planning and review meetings (see an example: https://lnkd.in/dN_hMyfQ)
- Campaign visual outline (or deck) to show how it impacts the pipeline and revenue

Our template: https://lnkd.in/dSmufFht

3. INTERCONNECTED AND CROSS-FUNCTIONAL

Every program impacts another, avoiding siloed execution.

Thought leadership ads to strategic accounts generate first-party engagement signals sales use for further engagement.

Webinars are tailored to a specific use case, buyer persona, and subset of accounts. They repurpose thought leadership content and are repurposed later as market research.

4. INFLUENCING THE ENTIRE BUYER JOURNEY

Marketing plans shouldn't be "brand awareness vs. demand capture" or "new pipeline vs. expansion."

If you focus on brand only, your sales process will struggle. We saw several MarTech companies generating buzz around them but struggling to convert brand into demand.

If you focus on demand capture, you'll miss the majority of the market.

Good marketing plans generate revenue while creating future pipeline, growing share of wallet, and preventing churn.

5. BACKED BY DATA

Marketing plans based on gut feelings or broad data always fail.

Plans that include revenue trends and sales pipeline velocity across markets, segments, and use cases (clusters) help make smart bets.

---

The reality is simple:

Our 2026 marketing plan won't fail because our CEO "doesn't get marketing". 

It will fail because we fail to clearly connect the dots between the activities and revenue.

Here's how to align ABM playbooks with long sales cycles and continuous nurturing. 

Our industry problem - engaging enterprise accounts the same way we sell $49 products. The mindset behind: if they are in the market, they will buy. We just need to hit them at the right time with the right message.

But this is fundamentally wrong when it comes to selling high ACV products. The low-ticket playbook simply doesn't work.

The enterprise sales cycle is long not because we send bad emails. It's long because corporates and mid-size companies operate in a completely different reality:

- Strategic initiatives
- Long-term planning
- Low velocity
- Complex buying centers with long decision cycles

Your solution should be a part of their current strategy. If it doesn't fit, nobody engages. But even if it does fit, enterprise buyers usually have their preferred vendors shortlist.

Sometimes you can break through, but it's more luck than a predictable motion.

WHAT YOU NEED INSTEAD

1. Always-on playbooks (continuous execution)

ABM Content 
- Thought leadership nurturing content
- Account love letters
- Paid & 1-1 content distribution
...

1-1 account development
- Account research
- Strategy sessions
- Multithreading
...

Ongoing social engagement 

3rd party signal tracking
- Hiring
- Stack changes
- Executive interviews
...

2. Program-based playbooks (planned initiatives)

E.g. 
Month 1: Content collabs
Month 2: Account-based webinar playbook 
Month 3: Follow-up workshops
...

3. Signal-based playbooks (reactive execution)

1 & 2 generate signals. 

Our job here: determine the level of intent and plan the right action aligned with it. 

TLDR;

To create future pipeline, you need to have continuos nurturing playbooks aligned with the length of enterprise buyer journey.

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John McTigue

Vladimir Blagojević

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